Hands-on: sobees for iPad works, but no Facebook replacement

While Facebook users wait for a native iPad application, another company has …

O Facebook app for iPad, where art thou? Facebook fans have been painfully aware that the social network has not yet released an iPad-native app, forcing users to choose between the iPhone app or using the Facebook website in Safari. Though there may be some behind-the-scenes drama that is preventing an official Facebook app from being released, third parties have begun coming to the rescue with their own offerings. One of the first is sobees for Facebook.

First things first: sobees does not look like the Facebook app we're all familiar with on the iPhone. Once you sign in through Facebook Connect and authorize the app to interact with your Facebook information, you're presented with a newspaper-like home screen. The application displays the most recent update as "breaking news" at the top of your screen, recent status updates in a scrollable list to the left, and flick-through-able recent images to the right. Scrollable lists of videos and recent links are found along the bottom of this home screen.

The menu system is located across the top of the app. Let's just say that we're not very aesthetically pleased by the menu presentation here (the font leaves a lot to be desired, for one), but it works. Each of the menu options does exactly what it claims, though some of the implementations could use some work. The "people" option lets you scroll through your friends in an alphabetically sorted picture grid, though "photos" shows you a number of photo albums uploaded by your friends in seemingly no order. We found this to be confusing and not very fun to use.

What was slightly better was the "events" tab, which displays a monthly calendar along with events and birthdays. This is one idea Facebook should feel free to steal:

It could be prettier, but it certainly communicates the information in a clear and understandable way. Unfortunately, you cannot RSVP to events or post on event walls from sobees—you can only look at them.

Making updates to your own stream is easy: just tap on the little "new post" icon in the upper right-hand corner (next to the refresh icon) from anywhere in the app. sobees does not allow you to post photos to Facebook like the native iPhone app does, though. One could argue that the iPad doesn't have a camera so this functionality isn't necessary, but there are instances in which you might want to post something synced to your photo library, a photo that was e-mailed to you, or a screenshot from your iPad.

Posting to other people's walls works in a similar manner. When you see an update you'd like to comment on, tap on the text to open a little pop-over window where you can read other people's comments and enter your own. You can also "like" certain posts from this window.

The question is: would you want to use this app over the Facebook iPhone app on the iPad? The obvious downside to the Facebook app is that you're limited to the smaller resolution and/or you must blow it up to 2x the size, pixelated images and all. This is the number one reason why we would see someone choosing sobees over the native Facebook app, as using iPhone applications on the iPad can get annoying quickly.

However, when it comes to other functionality, it's hard to argue with the intuitiveness of what Facebook has provided. The app looks just like the website (but designed for a touchscreen user experience). The icons on the main screen are intuitive, and it's not hard to figure out how to check up on your friends' updates, RSVP to events, post info to your wall, Facebook chat with friends, answer friend requests, and more.

The Facebook app has more core functionality than sobees for Facebook, and the aesthetics come down to personal taste. If you can't live another day without using Facebook fullscreen on your iPad, then give sobees a shot. It's free (for now), after all, but we'd rather have an official iPad app from Facebook.

Honestly, as retarded as I think Facebook's newest interface is, I'd rather it looked like sobees's. the pictures above look simple, intuitive and easy to use. Maybe I'm missing out since I've not actually used it, but I don't think anything could be worse than the current Facebook interface.

Far from behind a scenes drama, the three20 library - a framework created by Facebook originally for their app, is simply not yet ready for iPad. It has grown quite a bit since going opensource and iPad support is currently being worked on by the team, but as someone who's developing with the library, I can tell you that the support is very pre-alpha right now.

I've just put up a shortcut to the website. Automatically take advantage of the bigger real estate. Better than the cramped confines of the iPhone app.

Yeah, a friend and I were talking about this just the other day... the lack of a Facebook app on the iPad when we were used to one on the iPhone. Basically we came to the exact same conclusion, the iPhone app exists because the screen is so small, something needed to be written to make Facebook usable. The iPad does not have this issue. The Facebook app for the iPad is... the web site itself. Make a shortcut for it and off you go. The screen size makes the web site itself completely usable. There is no need for an iPad Facebook app.

But getting back to the article, haven't you ever heard that native apps tend to be better optimized than a website? Because otherwise why would Yelp and other websites have native apps on the iPad? It's just a better experience. And people would love a better experience.

I thought the whole point of the iPad was to give you the internet, not to force the internet to adapt every web application to the iPad. If Facebook and every other website don't work for your "touchscreen experience", then isn't the touchscreen experience inherently a failed system?

Facebook only needs a more iPad optimized stylesheet. Keep in mind that performance isn't an issue on the iPad. The only problem right now is that the text is too small in portrait mode and links are a bit small for a touch interface the size of an iPad. (posted from an iPad)

Google Reader is perfectly usable on iPad Safari but a much better experience with one of the apps (NewsRack, Reeder, etc.).

The whole benefit of the web is device independence and app independence. Writing apps for small tasks is just ass backwards. First, you need an app for that task for each device. Second, you need an app for each task. In some cases, apps make sense, but reading news or looking at Facebook are fine in a browser. If they're not fine, work on your UI a bit and make it not suck. People are starting to do impressive things with modern browsers.

Why should any proprietary Apple-only binary app even need to be involved here?

You're right, it doesn't. I've been using the Facebook website on the iPad without even caring for the Facebook app. In the constraints of the iPhone, the Facebook app -- and apps like it -- serve a somewhat critical role in organising information in a more efficient means for the screen size. The Facebook app also performs a lot better on the original devices, especially when the app first came out.

That being said, there is still room for binary apps to aggregate multiple sources of information -- things which would require flipping between multiple tabs. Push notifications and contact/calendar integration are also served by binary apps. Though, that's speaking more to the iPhone OS' meager sense of cloud synchronisation than anything else.

This is interesting .... Perhaps not fully realized as a "great application" in its current form, but I like where they're going with it. As someone else pointed out, Facebook is probably more interested in making sure the full-blown web site works well with Safari on the iPad, rather than concerning themselves with writing yet another application to use it through.

The only reason you should really need custom applications for specific web sites is to address the failure of those sites to work reasonably well on the device you're using. With mobile phones, the screen size is usually the issue. You need an app that allows breaking the information down into sections that can easily be brought forward to use the whole screen, as needed. You may also need some custom code to make file transfers to/from the site easier -- since that may be a "weak spot" on a mobile device.

The iPad has a screen with the same resolution that standard SVGA monitors were running for YEARS on desktop PCs (1024x768), and runs a pretty full-featured browser.

So the only GOOD reason I can see for making custom Facebook apps, now, is if you're not really happy with the Facebook layout and you want an alternate way to work with the site. (Same reason programs like Amazon or eBay mobile apps will probably ALWAYS be popular.... They improve on the original web site's user experience in many ways.)